At present, treatment of, say, aortic aneurysms is conducted by implanting artificial blood vessels. In particular, the portion of a blood vessel which has an aneurysm is removed by resection, and an artificial blood vessel is implantd in place of the resected portion and connected to the remaining blood vessel by suturing.
The above-mentioned method of surgically implanting artificial blood vessels for treatment of aortic aneurysms, however, is highly dangerous. Especially, emergency operation for treatment of a ruptured aneurysm has a low life-saving rate, and operation on dissecting aortic aneurysms is difficult and has a high death rate.
The present invention has been accomplished to solve the above-mentioned problems encountered in the prior art. The primary object of the invention is to provide an appliance which is collapsible for insertion into human organs such as a blood vessel and can be brought to an affected or constricted part thereof, where the appliance is released so as to be expanded and implanted there without fail. Another object of the invention is to make it easy to collapse the appliance and introduce it into a catheter for insertion into a human organ. A third object of the invention is to provide a device capable of collapsing the appliance for insertion into human organs with ease and accuracy.